Playing with chocolate

A great activity for a rainy day or when your children are at home from school or childcare is making chocolate decorations.

My eldest son and I when to a chocolate course and got very inspired. The weekend after we went to the stores and bought a book about chocolate with lots of fun recipes, together with a chocolate thermometer, and some other basic utensils to work with chocolate.

Of course you don't need to buy much in order to enjoy chocolate decoration making with your children. We've had lots of fun at home and the youngest enjoyed himself just us much.

What to do? Buy dark chocolate with between 60% and 70% cocoa. White chocolate is quite difficult to work with and requires a little bit of practice. Melt the chocolate in the microwave at a low temperature so that it doesn't burn and check that it warms up to between 45 and 50 degrees Celsius. Then add really tiny chocolate bits and stir so that the added bits melt and the chocolate temperature goes down to around 32 degrees Celsius. By doing this your chocolate decorations will achieve more glance. Then you just put the melted chocolate in a plastic bag and make a small opening at one end and start making your decorations on a clean overhead. You can write your children’s names in chocolate, make flowers or let your children create their fantasy figures. Let the chocolate cool down at room temperature. If you put it in the fridge it will lose glance.

And so you have your chocolate decorations ready to be put on some ice cream or cake or just eat them as they are!

Share gladly your rainy day activity ideas to spend time with your children and strengthen family bonds.